Article 9
Why Don’t You Say What
You Mean?
Directness is not necessarily logical or effective. Indirectness
is not necessarily manipulative or insecure.
Deborah Tannen
A university president was expecting a
visit from a member of the board of trustees. When her secretary buzzed to tell
her that the board member had arrived,
she left her office and entered the reception area to greet him. Before ushering
him into her office, she handed her secretary a sheet of paper and said: “I’ve
just finished drafting this letter. Do you
think you could type it right away? I’d
like to get it out before lunch. And would
you please do me a favor and hold all
calls while I’m meeting with Mr.
Smith?”
When they sat down behind the
closed door of her office, Mr. Smith began by telling her that he thought she had
spoken inappropriately to her secretary.
“Don’t forget,” he said. “You’re the president!”
Putting aside the question of the appropriateness of his admonishing the
president on her way of speaking, it is revealing—and representative of many
Americans’ assumptions—that the indirect way in which the university president told her secretary what to do struck
him as self-deprecating. He took it as evidence that she didn’t think she had the
right to make demands of her secretary.
He probably thought he was giving her a
needed pep talk, bolstering her self-confidence.
I challenge the assumption that talking in an indirect way necessarily reveals
powerlessness, lack of self-confidence
or anything else about the character of
the speaker. Indirectness is a fundamental element in human communication. It
is also one of the elements that varies
most from one culture to another, and
one that can cause confusion and misunderstanding when speakers have different habits with regard to using it. I also
want to dispel the assumption that American women tend to be more indirect
than American men. Women and men
are both indirect, but in addition to
differences associated with their backgrounds—regional, ethnic and class—
they tend to be indirect in different situations and in different ways.
At work, we need to get others to do
things, and we all have different ways of
accomplishing this. Any individual’s
ways will vary depending on who is being addressed—a boss, a peer or a subordinate. At one extreme are bald
commands. At the other are requests so
indirect that they don’t sound like requests at all, but are just a statement of
need or a description of a situation. People with direct styles of asking others to
do things perceive indirect requests—if
they perceive them as requests at all—as
manipulative. But this is often just a way
of blaming others for our discomfort
with their styles.
The indirect style is no more manipulative than making a telephone call, asking “Is Rachel there?” and expecting
whoever answers the phone to put
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Rachel on. Only a child is likely to answer “Yes” and continue holding the
phone—not out of orneriness but because of inexperience with the conventional meaning of the questions. (A
mischievous adult might do it to tease.)
Those who feel that indirect orders are illogical or manipulative do not recognize
the conventional nature of indirect requests.
Issuing orders indirectly can be the
prerogative of those in power. Imagine,
for example, a master who says “It’s cold
in here” and expects a servant to make a
move to close a window, while a servant
who says the same thing is not likely to
see his employer rise to correct the situation and make him more comfortable. Indeed, a Frenchman raised in Brittany
tells me that his family never gave bald
commands to their servants but always
communicated orders in indirect and
highly polite ways. This pattern renders
less surprising the finding of David Bellinger and Jean Berko Gleason that fathers’ speech to their young children had
a higher incidence than mothers’ of both
direct imperatives like “Turn the bolt
with the wrench” and indirect orders like
“The wheel is going to fall off.”
The use of indirectness can hardly be
understood without the cross-cultural
perspective. Many Americans find it
self-evident that directness is logical and
aligned with power while indirectness is
akin to dishonesty and reflects subservi-
Article 9. Why Don’t You Say What You Mean?
ence. But for speakers raised in most of
the world’s cultures, varieties of indirectness are the norm in communication.
This is the pattern found by a Japanese
sociolinguist, Kunihiko Harada, in his
analysis of a conversation he recorded
between a Japanese boss and a subordinate.
The markers of superior status were
clear. One speaker was a Japanese man
in his late 40’s who managed the local
branch of a Japanese private school in
the United States. His conversational
partner was Japanese-American woman
in her early 20’s who worked at the
school. By virtue of his job, his age and
his native fluency in the language being
taught, the man was in the superior position. Yet when he addressed the woman,
he frequently used polite language and
almost always used indirectness. For example, he had tried and failed to find a
photography store that would make a
black-and-white print from a color negative for a brochure they were producing.
He let her know that he wanted her to
take over the task by stating the situation
and allowed her to volunteer to do it:
(This is a translation of the Japanese conversation.)
On this matter, that, that, on the
leaflet? This photo, I’m thinking of
changing it to black-and-white and
making it clearer.… I went to a
photo shop and asked them. They
said they didn’t do black-andwhite. I asked if they knew any
place that did. They said they
didn’t know. They weren’t very
helpful, but anyway, a place must
be found, the negative brought to
it, the picture developed.
Harada observes, “Given the fact that
there are some duties to be performed
and that there are two parties present, the
subordinate is supposed to assume that
those are his or her obligation.” It was
precisely because of his higher status
that the boss was free to choose whether
to speak formally or informally, to assert
his power or to play it down and build
rapport—an option not available to the
subordinate, who would have seemed
cheeky if she had chosen a style that enhanced friendliness and closeness.
The same pattern was found by a Chinese sociolinguist, Yuling Pan, in a
meeting of officials involved in a neighborhood youth program. All spoke in
ways that reflected their place in the hierarchy. A subordinate addressing a superior always spoke in a deferential way,
but a superior addressing a subordinate
could either be authoritarian, demonstrating his power, or friendly, establishing rapport. The ones in power had the
option of choosing which style to use. In
this spirit, I have been told by people
who prefer their bosses to give orders
indirectly that those who issue bald
commands must be pretty insecure; otherwise why would they have to bolster
their egos by throwing their weight
around?
I am not inclined to accept that those
who give orders directly are really insecure and powerless, any more than I
want to accept that judgment of those
who give indirect orders. The conclusion
to be drawn is that ways of talking
should not be taken as obvious evidence
of inner psychological states like insecurity or lack of confidence. Considering
the many influences on conversational
style, individuals have a wide range of
ways of getting things done and expressing their emotional states. Personality
characteristics like insecurity cannot be
linked to ways of speaking in an automatic, self-evident way.
Those who expect orders to be given
indirectly are offended when they come
unadorned. One woman said that when
her boss gives her instructions, she feels
she should click her heels, salute, and say
“Yes, Boss!” His directions strike her as
so imperious as to border on the militaristic. Yet I received a letter from a man
telling me that indirect orders were a fundamental part of his military training: He
wrote:
Many years ago, when I was in the
Navy, I was training to be a radio
technician. One class I was in was
taught by a chief radioman, a regular Navy man who had been to
sea, and who was then in his third
hitch. The students, about 20 of us,
were fresh out of boot camp, with
no sea duty and little knowledge of
real Navy life. One day in class the
chief said it was hot in the room.
The student didn’t react, except to
nod in agreement. The chief re2
peated himself: “It’s hot in this
room.” Again there was no reaction from the students.
Then the chief explained. He
wasn’t looking for agreement or
discussion from us. When he said
that the room was hot, he expected
us to do something about it—like
opening the window. He tried it
one more time, and this time all of
us left our workbenches and
headed for the windows. We had
learned. And we had many opportunities to apply what we had
learned.
This letter especially intrigued me because “It’s cold in here” is the standard
sentence used by linguists to illustrate an
indirect way of getting someone to do
something—as I used it earlier. In this
example, it is the very obviousness and
rigidity of the military hierarchy that
makes the statement of a problem sufficient to trigger corrective action on the
part of subordinates.
A man who had worked at the Pentagon reinforced the view that the burden
of interpretation is on subordinates in the
military—and he noticed the difference
when he moved to a position in the private sector. He was frustrated when he’d
say to his new secretary, for example,
“Do we have a list of invitees?” and be
told, “I don’t know; we probably do”
rather than “I’ll get it for you.” Indeed,
he explained, at the Pentagon, such a
question would likely be heard as a reproach that the list was not already on his
desk.
The suggestion that indirectness is associated with the military must come as
a surprise to many. But everyone is indirect, meaning more than is put into
words and deriving meaning from words
that are never actually said. It’s a matter
of where, when and how we each tend to
be indirect and look for hidden meanings. But indirectness has a built-in liability. There is a risk that the other will
either miss or choose to ignore your
meaning.
O
n Jan. 13, 1982, a freezing cold,
snowy day in Washington, Air Florida
Flight 90 took off from National Airport,
but could not get the lift it needed to keep
ANNUAL EDITIONS
climbing. It crashed into a bridge linking
Washington to the state of Virginia and
plunged into the Potomac. Of the 79 people on board all but 5 perished, many
floundering and drowning in the icy water while horror-stricken by-standers
watched helplessly from the river’s edge
and millions more watched, aghast, on
their television screens. Experts later
concluded that the plane had waited too
long after de-icing to take off. Fresh
buildup of ice on the wings and engine
brought the plane down. How could the
pilot and co-pilot have made such a blunder? Didn’t at least one of them realize it
was dangerous to take off under these
conditions?
The co-pilot repeatedly
called attention to
dangerous conditions, but
the captain didn’t get the
message.
Charlotte Linde, a linguist at the Institute for Research on Learning in Palo
Alto, Calif., has studied the “black box”
recordings of cockpit conversations that
preceded crashes as well as tape recordings of conversations that took place
among crews during flight simulations in
which problems were presented. Among
the black box conversations she studied
was the one between the pilot and co-pilot just before the Air Florida crash. The
pilot, it turned out, had little experience
flying in icy weather. The co-pilot had a
bit more, and it became heartbreakingly
clear on analysis that he had tried to warn
the pilot, but he did so indirectly.
The co-pilot repeatedly called attention to the bad weather and to ice building up on other planes:
Co-pilot: Look how the ice is just
hanging on his, ah, back, back there, see
that?…
Co-pilot: See all those icicles on the
back there and everything?
Captain: Yeah.
He expressed concern early on about
the long waiting time between de-icing:
Co-pilot: Boy, this is a, this is a losing
battle here on trying to de-ice those
things, it [gives] you a false feeling of security, that’s all that does.
Shortly after they were given clearance to take off, he again expressed concern:
Co-pilot: Let’s check these tops again
since we been setting here awhile.
Captain: I think we get to go here in a
minute.
When they were about to take off, the
co-pilot called attention to the engine instrument readings, which were not normal:
Co-pilot: That don’t seem right, does
it? [three-second pause] Ah, that’s not
right.…
Captain: Yes, it is, there’s 80.
Co-pilot: Naw, I don’t think that’s right.
[seven-second pause] Ah, maybe it is.
Captain: Hundred and twenty.
Co-pilot: I don’t know.
The takeoff proceeded, and 37 seconds later the pilot and co-pilot exchanged their last words.
The co-pilot had repeatedly called the
pilot’s attention to dangerous conditions
but did not directly suggest they abort the
takeoff. In Linde’s judgment, he was expressing his concern indirectly, and the
captain didn’t pick up on it—with tragic
results.
That the co-pilot was trying to warn
the captain indirectly is supported by evidence from another airline accident—a
relatively minor one—investigated by
Linde that also involved the unsuccessful use of indirectness.
On July 9, 1978, Allegheny Airlines
Flight 453 was landing at Monroe
County Airport in Rochester, when it
overran the runway by 728 feet. Everyone survived. This meant that the captain
and co-pilot could be interviewed. It
turned out that the plane had been flying
too fast for a safe landing. The captain
should have realized this and flown
around a second time, decreasing his
speed before trying to land. The captain
said he simply had not been aware that
he was going too fast. But the co-pilot
told interviewers that he “tried to warn
the captain in subtle ways, like mentioning the possibility of a tail wind and the
slowness of flap extension.” His exact
words were recorded in the black box.
The cross-hatches indicate words deleted
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by the National Transportation Safety
Board and were probably expletives:
Co-pilot: Yeah, it looks like you got a
tail wind here.
Yeah.
[?]: Yeah [it] moves awfully # slow.
Co-pilot: Yeah the # flaps are slower
than a #.
Captain: We’ll make it, gonna have to
add power.
Co-pilot: I know.
The co-pilot thought the captain
would understand that if there was a tail
wind, it would result in the plane going
too fast, and if the flaps were slow, they
would be inadequate to break the speed
sufficiently for a safe landing. He
thought the captain would then correct
for the error by not trying to land. But the
captain said he didn’t interpret the copilot’s remarks to mean they were going
too fast.
Linde believes it is not a coincidence
that the people being indirect in these
conversations were the co-pilots. In her
analyses of flight-crew conversations
she found it was typical for the speech of
subordinates to be more mitigated—polite, tentative or indirect. She also found
that topics broached in a mitigated way
were more likely to fail, and that captains
were more likely to ignore hints from
their crew members than the other way
around. These findings are evidence that
not only can indirectness and other forms
of mitigation be misunderstood, but they
are also easier to ignore.
In the Air Florida case, it is doubtful
that the captain did not realize what the
co-pilot was suggesting when he said,
“Let’s check these tops again since we
been setting here awhile” (though it
seems safe to assume he did not realize
the gravity of the co-pilot’s concern).
But the indirectness of the co-pilot’s
phrasing certainly made it easier for the
pilot to ignore it. In this sense, the captain’s response, “I think we get to go here
in a minute,” was an indirect way of saying, “I’d rather not.” In view of these patterns, the flight crews of some airlines
are now given training to express their
concerns, even to superiors, in more direct ways.
The conclusion that people should
learn to express themselves more directly has a ring of truth to it—especially
Article 9. Why Don’t You Say What You Mean?
for Americans. But direct communication is not necessarily always preferable.
If more direct expression is better communication, then the most direct-speaking crews should be the best ones. Linde
was surprised to find in her research that
crews that used the most mitigated
speech were often judged the best crews.
As part of the study of talk among cockpit crews in flight simulations, the trainers observed and rated the performances
of the simulation crews. The crews they
rated top in performance had a higher
rate of mitigation than crews they judged
to be poor.
This finding seems at odds with the
role played by indirectness in the examples of crashes that we just saw. Linde
concluded that since every utterance
functions on two levels—the referential
(what is says) and the relational (what it
implies about the speaker’s relationships), crews that attend to the relational
level will be better crews. A similar explanation was suggested by Kunihiko
Harada. He believes that the secret of
successful communication lies not in
teaching subordinates to be more direct,
but in teaching higher-ups to be more
sensitive to indirect meaning. In other
words, the crashes resulted not only because the co-pilots tried to alert the captains to danger indirectly but also
because the captains were not attuned to
the co-pilots’ hints. What made for successful performance among the best
crews might have been the ability—or
willingness—of listeners to pick up on
hints, just as members of families or
longstanding couples come to understand each other’s meaning without anyone being particularly explicit.
It is not surprising that a Japanese sociolinguist came up with this explanation; what he described is the Japanese
system, by which good communication
is believed to take place when meaning is
gleaned without being stated directly—
or at all.
W
hile Americans believe that “the
squeaky wheel gets the grease” (so it’s
best to speak up), the Japanese say, “The
nail that sticks out gets hammered back
in” (so it’s best to remain silent if you
don’t want to be hit on the head). Many
Japanese scholars writing in English
have tried to explain to bewildered
Americans the ethics of a culture in
which silence is often given greater
value than speech, and ideas are believed
to be best communicated without being
explicitly stated. Key concepts in Japanese give a flavor of the attitudes toward
language that they reveal—and set in relief the strategies that Americans encounter at work when talking to other
Americans.
Takie Sugiyama Lebra, a Japaneseborn anthropologist, explains that one of
the most basic values in Japanese culture
is omoiyari, which she translates as “empathy.” Because of omoiyari, it should
not be necessary to state one’s meaning
explicitly; people should be able to sense
each other’s meaning intuitively. Lebra
explains that it is typical for a Japanese
speaker to let sentences trail off rather
than complete them because expressing
ideas before knowing how they will be
received seems intrusive. “Only an insensitive, uncouth person needs a direct,
verbal, complete message,” Lebra says.
Sasshi, the anticipation of another’s
message through insightful guesswork,
is considered an indication of maturity.
Considering the value placed on direct communication by Americans in
general, and especially by American
business people, it is easy to imagine that
many American readers may scoff at
such conversational habits. But the success of Japanese businesses makes it impossible to continue to maintain that
there is anything inherently inefficient
about such conversational conventions.
With indirectness, as with all aspects of
conversational style, our own habitual
style seems to make sense—seems polite, right and good. The light cast by the
habits and assumptions of another culture can help us see our way to the flexibility and respect for other styles that is
the only best way of speaking.
Deborah Tannen is University Professor of
Linguistics at Georgetown University.
From The New York Times Magazine, August 28, 1994, pp. 46–49. Adapted from Talking 9 to 5: How Women’s and Men’s Conversational Styles Affect
Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, and What Gets Done at Work by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. © 1994 by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. Reprinted by
permission of William Morrow & Company, Inc.
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